


an island in the fog

by pyotr



Category: Klaus (2019)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21850504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: ch 3:instead, jesper's eyes had snagged on the gaggle of children some few buildings down as they clustered around mogens, enraptured, as he spun some sort of animated tale while sprawled on the steps of what used to be the ellingboe meeting hall. it looked, alva notes dryly, almost as if he were holding court.
Relationships: Jesper Johanssen/Mogens
Comments: 19
Kudos: 106





	1. sails alee (jesper, mogens, margu)

**Author's Note:**

> a collection of unrelated klaus 2019 drabbles, from prompts & requests sent to my tumblr @jesperesso
> 
> samhatesstripclubs asked:  
> maybe write jesper having a day to show margu how the post works? kind of a bring your daughter to work day-esque scenario? ft. mogens being a bother until he spots margu. he activates softie mode real quick.
> 
> three things:  
> 1) headcanon that mogens wasnt paying attention when jesper introduced himself and its too late now to ask his name so he just calls him postman all the time  
> 2) the hc that mogens speaks even a little bit of saami and everyone is absolutely blown away by it is hilarious to me.  
> 3) _"gittu, unge"_ translates roughly to "thanks, kid" or "thanks, brat". had to do a bit of a runaround for this translation; afaik northern saami is the dialect spoken in the movie, so that's what i used.
> 
> also, title is technically from the _three score and ten_ lyric "methinks I see a host of craft/spreading their sails alee" which basically just means they're spreading sail on the side of the ship that's sheltered from the wind

margu was, jesper thinks, one of the best listeners he’s ever met.

not that she understood a word out of his mouth, of course, but he didn’t understand her, either, so it evened out. he would talk (and talk and talk) about everything and nothing, about things he didn’t even tell alva or klaus, and she would watch him seriously with big, blue eyes. he’d never admit it, but that kid might just have been jesper’s best friend.

 _not_ that anyone else needed to know, anyway.

“so i got sent off to _boot camp,”_ jesper was saying, because although he may have repaired his relationship with his father somewhat- repaired in the way that leaks in a hull are patched until returned to port- the bad feeling had been there too long to be completely forgotten, and margu nods along sagely as if she understood. “like some kind of naughty kid. who does that?”

she followed him occasionally on his routes, trailing along as he delivered letters and packages through town and trying to match her strides to his own, stepping in the prints his boots left in the snow. he pushes the door to the post office open with his hip, listening to her chatter on at him in saami, opening his mouth to respond when her words lull.

“sounds like a tough break, postman,” drawls a familiar voice, and jesper freezes. “this must have seemed like a vacation to you after all that. smeerensburg’s known for its quaint townsfolk and scenic views, after all.”

the smile slips off jesper’s face like oil on water when he catches sight of mogens, the other man reclined in jesper’s usual chair, his boots (muddy, of course) propped up on the desk and crossed at the ankle, his hands folded behind his head as he leans back on the chair’s rear two legs.

jesper hopes, somewhat uncharitably, that it breaks beneath him.

“what do you want _now?”_ he asks plaintively, letting the door fall shut behind him. margu scuttles past him with her own bag full of letters- considerably smaller than his own, but though jesper may have been _reformed_ in his own way, hard work was still not his forte and every bit of help was appreciated- to the low table in the corner that alva had set up for her with a knowing look; the girl knew enough to recognize klaus’s name, so jesper always let her sort out letters to their friend from the rest of the mail.

“who says i want something?” mogens pulls his feet off the desk, the chair’s two front legs clattering against the floor. instead he slumps in his seat and clasps his hands over his stomach, tilting his head back a bit to meet jesper’s eye under the brim of his cap and give a lazy, smug smile reminiscent of their first meeting all those months ago. “can’t a man just come to see if he’s got mail?”

jesper’s frown deepens, his own mouth pressing into an irritated line. he makes a show of rifling through his satchel as if looking for letters addressed to mogens, and then shrugs helplessly. “nope, nothing. now go, i’ve got _work_ to do.”

mogens looks him up and down- just once, but it’s enough to make jesper fidget- before rolling his eyes and clambering to his feet with a groan, popping his back. he gives jesper another look, somewhere halfway between a smirk and a sneer, but he only makes it halfway to the door before margu pipes up, and both men pause to look at her.

“jesper!” she chirps and waves him over, and when he comes and looks at her desk he finds she hasn’t emptied a single letter from her bag. instead she’s pulled out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, and across the page has scribbled out a drawing: to jesper it looks like one of those old steam ships, an iron behemoth of an icebreaker, with colorful pennants streaming from its masts and black smog billowing from its smokestacks.

he’s not sure where she would have seen a ship like that- he’d only ever seen them at dock in kristiania- but she distracts him by tugging at his sleeve and rattling something off in saami, the words sounding like they were tripping off her tongue.

“for me?” he can hear mogens say behind him, a curious lilt to his voice, the floorboards creaking beneath his boots as he steps closer; jesper does his best to keep still when the other man leans past his shoulder to see. he can just barely glimpse the other man’s face from the corner of his eye, but mogens’s movements are careful when he goes to grab the picture.

when jesper turns to look he find’s mogens’s expression free of its usual edge, not easy to read but at least more open: surprised, and a look that on anyone else jesper would have called _soft._ it’s a strange look on the ferryman, he decides, one he hasn’t seen before.

it looks odd on him. odd, but not bad.

 _“giitu, unge,”_ mogens says gruffly after a moment, and margu’s face lights up as he carefully folds the drawing and slips it into his coat. jesper knows his mouth is hanging open- he’d never imagined that mogens even knew how to say the words _thank you,_ let alone in saami- but mogens seems to neither care nor notice as he ruffles margu’s hair with one big hand before making for the post office’s single door. “be seeing you then, postman.”

“hey, what?” jesper manages, feeling a bit adrift. “where are you going?”

“to get a drink,” mogens answers, and he pauses to flash jesper a sharp grin before slipping out the door. “you’ve got a tab running, right?”


	2. how hard the winds did blow (mogens/jesper)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> doomdxys asked:
> 
> i just sent u money to write terror fic BUT. mogens returning to smeerensburg after a storm traps him on the mainland for like [insert far too long time period idk time] and jesper does not understand the concept of not sailing during storms and is an idiot about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from stan rogers's _rolling down to old maui_. happy holidays, y'all!

“you’ve been gone,” is the first thing jesper says when he sees mogens again, “for two weeks.”

the rush of relief is an almost heady, breathless feeling, tempered only by the flash of surprise across mogens’s face that melts into insufferable smugness. he’d heard some chattering about the ferry finally making land for the first time in half a month, and jesper’s heart had leapt to his throat even as he rushed to the dock.

he had _missed_ mogens, though he’d never admit it. things hadn’t felt right with him gone.

“aw, princess,” mogens coos mockingly, “were you worried about little ol’ me?”

that same rush comes to as abrupt of a halt as slamming into a brick wall, and jesper stumbles over his feet for a moment with the force of it. suddenly he’s reminded of all the ways and reasons that mogens grated on him, all the times he’d wished to be free of the man, and the worry that had been nagging him disappears into smoke.

when he looks up mogens is still standing on the deck of his boat: rope looped loosely in one hand, right foot propped propped up on the side of the boat as he leaned forward, a grin taking up its usual place on his mouth. it was such a quintessentially _mogens_ image that some strange, unidentifiable feeling bloomed and twisted in jesper’s chest and crept up to curl around his throat.

he’d never been a violent man, jesper, but now he wanted more than anything in the world than to wipe that smirk off of mogens’s face.

he realizes that he’s been quiet maybe a bit too long when some of the smugness seeps from mogens’s face, his grin shrinking and a furrow appearing between the sailor’s brows. he’d never seen mogens worried- he was always so blase, so unruffled and unaffected- it was an interesting expression on his face. “jesper?”

the edge of the dock stands a foot or so above the gunwale of the boat, so when jesper drops to his knees he is nearly eye-height with mogens. that feeling rears its head, wraps itself around his tongue and presses against the back of his teeth as he grabs for the lapels of mogens’s old wool greatcoat lighting-fast. he’s only half-sure of what he’s doing, still almost convinced that he’s out to throttle the man, and—

—all but smashes their mouths together instead.

it’s not like any kiss jesper has had before. it’s inelegant and uncomfortable, and he’s like to fall off the dock at any moment, leaning as he is, and he’s aware that at some point he has squeezed his eyes shut. mogens is still as stone against him aside from an initial sharp intake of breath, but the smirk that had twisted his mouth is gone- jesper can _feel_ it, and wasn’t that an odd thought- and when jesper pulls back he finds mogens’s eyes closed, that furrow between his brow deeper than before.

(he keeps his fingers curled tight in mogens’s coat because he knows that if he let go he’d go dropping into the cold water or the hard deck of the ferry, and he’s dimly aware that mogens’s hands had gone to brace on the edge of the dock when jesper’d tugged him forward, and, and, and)

mogens’s eyes open, then, and they are still near, noses brushing as jesper notes the sailor’s gobsmacked expression up close. and then mogens slips on that same sly grin (was it jesper’s imagination, or did he still look off-kilter?) and past the thundering of his pulse jesper can feel mogens’s hand close around his upper arm, tugging until he’s sent tumbling down across the deck with a grunt.

“you _were_ worried,” mogens says, sounding delighted. he’s got his hands tucked in his pockets now, bare fingers out of the cold. “missed me even, probably. say, postman, this how you greet all your friends?”

 _friends._ that sure was a word.

jesper grumbles, rubbing his shoulder. he avoids the other man’s eyes and instead squints off into the distance, the midday sun bright on the fresh snow. “i’ll miss you less if you keep this up,” he warns, and then flushes, his stomach twisting in nervous knots. “ _not_ that i missed you in the first place.”

“if you say so.” the answer is good-natured, and jesper’s just relieved to be let off the hook- for now, at least. and then mogens makes a noise as if something just occurred to him, and the nerves come rushing back fast enough that jesper almost chokes. “y’know, this reads like a bad romance story. big city dandy rides in and falls for the _handsome, dashing_ ferryman—”

jesper wishes, quite suddenly, that he’d strangled mogens instead. 


	3. occasional glimpses (alva)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lokomotives asked:
> 
> The Smeerensburg children 100% look up to Mogens as a role model. The stinky sailor man gets to LEAVE the island. Tho I feel some of the Ellingboe kids probs play pranks on him a lot for having dark hair (dark hair = Krum, never mind the fact that Mogens isn't one). I would love to see a little drabble of Mogens dealing with his fans, and Jesper being So confused

“alva,” jesper says, hesitatingly, “does anything look… off, to you?”

alva, who’d been pouring despairingly over the pages of arithmetic she’d assigned as homework, glances up at jesper’s indication. it was midsummer and the sun was bright and pale overhead, the brilliant white snow having melted to reveal a dull, drab grey landscape, brightened only by the splashes of color that was beginning to make up various homes in the town. smeerensburg now was worlds away from the smeerensburg she’d arrived in, that handful of years ago.

but it wasn’t any of that which jesper referred to; he’d only ever known a smeerensburg in transition, after all. he’d been the reason that smeerensburg had changed in the first place.

no, it wasn’t any of that. instead, his eyes had snagged on the gaggle of children some few buildings down as they clustered around mogens, enraptured, as he spun some sort of animated tale while sprawled on the steps of what used to be the ellingboe meeting hall. it looked, alva notes dryly, almost as if he were holding court.

“not particularly,” she says. “do you think this answer deserves half points, or should i just strike it?”

“you don’t think anything’s wrong?” jesper demands, and he sounds incredulous, turning to look at her head on. his expression was pinched in that look of disbelief that was simultaneously grating and endearing, the same look he’d worn when he’d learned that people here did their own laundry and heated their own baths. “who let _mogens_ be around kids? is that allowed?”

alva sets aside her grading, equal parts exasperated and fond. “it’s fine, jesper. he’s good with them, really.”

still, jesper doesn’t seem particularly reassured. alva watches his eyes flicker back to where mogens sat with the children- one of the lets out an excited squeal of laughter and while alva doesn’t turn to look, she sees the way jesper’s shoulders jump at the sound- and she huffs out a sigh.

“are you sure?” he asks her doubtfully. she understood his concern- mogens didn’t have the best track record with _adults,_ and inflicting him on children felt beyond the pale- but they’d not had any issues so far. “what’s he doing with them, anyway? i thought his only hobbies were day drinking and thinking of new ways to torment me.”

alva rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitches with a smile. she says, “he tells them stories.”

“stories?”

“yes, stories.” she shuffles her papers in her lap. “i told him i’d pay half his tab if he babysat one day out of the week for me. he used to read to them, but i think he’s just making things up, now.”

jesper hums out a _huh_ but he still sounds a bit disbelieving, and they sit there like that for a long moment as alva goes back to her grading, scratching out incorrect answers in red pencil.

then, jesper exclaims incredulously, “mogens can _read?”_


End file.
